


Try Guys 'Death by Text': What Followed

by TheQuillofRaven



Category: Buzzfeed The Try Guys (Web Series)
Genre: Death, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hacking, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Murder, Murder Mystery, My First Fanfic, Mystery, Obsession, Past Character Death, Psychological Drama, Sad, Stalking, The Try Guys, Try Guys: Death by Text
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-01-03 02:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21172244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQuillofRaven/pseuds/TheQuillofRaven
Summary: Ned is devastated after the incident that felt like a fever dream. Grief-stricken, shocked and hungry for revenge, what will he do next?Based on the short film the Try Guys made in collaboration with Txt Stories. If you have not seen it yet. I would suggest you see it. This is my take on what followed.This is also my first fanfiction. I do not expect it to be great. However, I tried to give a scientific explanation which is not at all accurate. I apologize to all the science nerd if you ever come across this.





	1. The Rest of the Night

**The Rest of the Night**

* * *

  
Ned Fulmer rushed to the nursery where his son, Wesley was sleeping.

He was still trying to comprehend what just happened. It all started with a single text from an unknown number on the Try Guys' group chat. What could have been an innocuous prank, turned out to be an insidious game orchestrated by a psychopath. It felt like a fever dream. Maybe it was. Ned at least hoped it was. Because that would mean his friends were okay and still alive. And it would also mean, the last text was a lie. There is no way Wesley can be involved. He is just a baby.

On entering the nursery, Ned's eyes widened with fear as he watched Wes, who can barely crawl, standing on his crib holding a phone. As a father, there are many things Ned does not want to see or experience. This was something that Ned never thought he needed to add to the list. His attention went to the phone Wes was holding. Where did he get that? Wes can barely hold it.

"God, Wes!", Ned could not help but ask. It was merely a whisper. "What have you done?". Wes seemed oblivious to the horror because he was laughing and playing with the phone on his hand. He was obviously an innocent child, who could not understand the gravity of the situation.

Ned who was still in shock and not having fully recovered from the grief, Ned slowly made his way towards the crib. He took the phone from his son's grip and picked him up. The paternal instinct overcame the shock as he started to cuddle Wes. 

Ned was not thinking straight. Whether it was stress, grief, fatigue or a result of all of them, Ned started asking Wes questions like "What did you do with all my friends?" and "Where is everybody? Where did they go?". 

Grief probably had the biggest role to play. Ned just lost his closest friends. The other Try Guys are more than just friends, they were almost like his brothers. Ned gave in to exhaustion and let his knees slide. He was now sitting against the crib with Wes on his arm.

His mind wandered off and oscillated between Keith... Zach... Eugene...   
Even though the thoughts crushed his soul, he could not stop thinking about them. He remembered every tiny detail about them, memories where they were laughing together and felt a deep ache thinking about what his friends always wanted to do but now they will never be able to do those. Even with all the risks and dangerous things they had to try for the entertainment of the audience, Ned never thought he would be losing them all at once like this.

Ned for the first time let out a sob. He really wanted to scream or choke himself to death, but he wouldn't. Because he needed to find out who was behind it. It as not Wes. He will find him. But right now, Ned needed to grieve. He was fully crying at this point.

A rather irrational thought came to his head. He thought about leaving his house and go after who had done this.

The weight on his arm, peacefully sleeping now, brought him back to reality.   
He may have failed his friends and that guilt will haunt him for the rest of his life. But he is ready to give away anything to protect his family. Now that he most need to. 

A killer is on the loose. Whoever the killer was, they were right here in this nursery. How else would Wes get the phone? Maybe they left through the window. The thought made him shudder. It was not safe for his family to be here.

Ned held his son closer to his heart. Battling with shock and grief, exhausting finally gave in. Ned spent the rest of the night on the nursery floor, holding Wesley in his arms. 

  



	2. In the Wake

####  **In the wake**

* * *

The funeral was dark and sombre. It has been quite sometime after the tragic event. There was no evidence discovered at the scenes of crime. Keith Habersberger, Zach Kornfeld and Eugene Lee Yang had died mysteriously at around 3 a.m. There was no visible mark or wound on their bodies to suggest as to what caused their untimely demise. It left the police baffled. Ned, on the other hand, was focused on finding the killer. Secretly, he had been gathering any lead he could find.

Ever since that horrid day, Ned has not talked much. Ariel, his wife, had returned the next morning to find Ned on the nursery and that was the last time Ned had actually broken down to her. It worried Ariel and everyone else. There were friends, the family of his late friends and co-workers who came by and asked Ned how he was doing. All he said was "I'm fine". 

Ever since the news broke the internet, the fans otherwise known as the Tryceratops have been going crazy. The Try Guys' social media is flooded with condolences and concerns. Ned, however, had stopped following the internet. His wounds were still too fresh for that. Everything reminded him of his late friends. As a result, it was impossible for him to know what their fans were up to nowadays. But everyone will soon find it out.

* * *

A sudden loud bang echoed through the walls of an otherwise silent church building where Ned and everyone near and dear to the deceased was silently mourning the fallen. Everyone in the church got up to look around. Like a swarm of flies, what seemed like thousands of Try Guys fan had decided to crash the funeral to express their grief. Total chaos ensued as grieving fans started to infiltrate the church building disturbing the decorum and almost disrespecting the deceased.

"Call the police!", Someone shouted.

The efforts to keep the Tryceratops army away proved futile. That is when a strong-build figure in a black hoodie knocked a confused Ned off his balance. Before he could see his face, the man had disappeared from his sight and blended into the chaos. 

As the sirens approached the scene, the number of frantic fans started to decrease. Ariel helped her husband to his feet. 

"Are you okay?", she asked.

"Yeah, I am fine. Someone walked into me", Ned replied.

A concerned Ariel took a good look at Ned and finally asked, "Are you sure you are not hurt?" referring to a small cut on the side of Ned's palm. 

"It's just a scratch", Ned replied.

Ned reached down his pocket to get his handkerchief when his fingers touched something unfamiliar. It was a crumbled piece of paper which Ned cannot remember putting it there. He quickly unfolded the paper with his shivering hands. 

Ned and Ariel stared in horror at their family picture with the faces crossed out. Oddly reminiscent of Keith's contact card the night he died.


	3. Recall

####  **Recall**

* * *

It has been three years since the Fulmers moved to a different neighbourhood. The case went cold soon after. The Try fans moved on eventually as the internet is a fast-moving train. There is always someone new. It did not take much time for people to forget the quartet and hop on to the newest trends. The Try Guys company was sold to some other bigger company and Ned does not really care enough to find out what happened to it. 

Wes is a preschooler now. He had learned to walk and talk much to his father's absence. Ned is barely the family man or the loving husband he was known to be. Of course, he accompanies Ariel on her interior decorating gigs more than ever but he is no longer the man who would never shut up talking about his wife and kid. Ariel is supportive of his grieving husband but on the inside, it pains her. Of course, she loved the other Try Guys. But it was time for her to let them go. She hopes every day that Ned would too.

When Ned is not at work with Ariel, he spends all of his time in his tiny little "den", the basement of his new house. He is usually left alone. The relationship with his wife had taken a toll as they barely talk outside work. But he knows his wife still cared for him and so did he. They had just somehow lost the ability to express it to each other.

Ned spends most of his time trying to figure out what killed his friends with no luck so far. He was a man of science and so raged on with math and logic. He knows there was something that he was missing out no matter how many time he replayed the events of that horrid night on his mind. He was not one to give up. 

* * *

_Keith was found on the bathroom floor. Zach and Eugene were found on the couch. All three victims had two things in common. None of them sustained any sort of physical injury and there was no sign of forced entry. The autopsy report stated the cause of death to be cardiac arrest. Taking into consideration all of them were fairly young, healthy and had no medical history related to heart diseases, __it baffled everyone as to how could all of them suffer a heart attack at the same time?  
  
_One thing was certain that the killer was good with technology as he had managed to hack all of their phones. But it was humanly impossible for a person to be at multiple places at the same time. The only thing the guys had with them was their phone. He probably was at the right track as the phone was the centre of everything that went wrong that night. Starting from their group chat being hacked to the mysterious phone that Ned found on Wes. Ned till date trembles at the thought that the killer might have been in his house at some point. 

Why would the killer leave the phone? Major evidence. Was it just to mock the police department and everyone trying to solve it or was the killer trying to say something. The cyber forensics discovered nothing on the phone. The phone Wes had was in fact just a decoy. Why would the killer take so much risk of breaking into Ned's house and planting fake evidence?

* * *

The scenes played in Ned's mind for the millionth time when his deep ponder was interrupted by a loud shattering glass noise. Feeling threatened, Ned grabbed a baseball bat that he subconsciously always keeps within his reach. As he made his way to the living room, he noticed Ariel picking up broken pieces of a wine glass.

"Ned?!", Ariel exclaimed. "What are you doing?"

"T-t-the... noise. I thought someone....", Ned trailed off. He was visibly shaking from anxiety. He dropped the baseball bat from his trembling hands.

Ariel seeing her husband about to suffer from a panic attack. She dropped what she was doing and went to calm her husband down.

"It's okay, honey", Ariel went in to hug Ned. "We are okay". It took him some time but the warm touch and soothing assurance from his wife calmed Ned down. They stood like that for what seemed like an hour or so. But in reality, it was just a few minutes.

"I think the speaker is broken.", Ariel finally broke the silence. "I could not hear anything. So, I turned the volume up then somehow it knocked off my wine glass". Apparently, the sound waves the speaker emitted was above the hearing range and at the same time strong enough to break the wine glass that was next to it.

Something clicked in Ned's mind. Can sound waves be strong enough to cause a heart attack as well?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is totally fictional. I am not a huge science nerd and so it was difficult for me to find a scientific explanation. I totally made it up. This is just a story and I hope I do not upset anyone with my poor explanation. Please forgive me.


	4. A Lead

#### A Lead

* * *

"Ultrasounds cannot be heard by humans but it has been seen that exposure to a high decibel can pose serious damage to the ears", Sarah McCarty, a cyber forensics specialist, explained. "And yeah, exposure to powerful ultrasonic sounds definitely increases the risks of heart attacks and strokes".

"Oh God", Ned whimpered.

What was previously just a theory in Ned's mind turned out to be true. At first, he thought learning the truth will soothe his restlessness as it would mean being closer to finding the killer. But right now, all he can think about is how his friends suffered at the hands of a silent yet not-so-silent killer. It must have been painful and Ned was not there to save them.

"Can phones emit ultrasounds?", Ned asked Sarah.

"It can", Sarah confirmed his fears. "Ultrasounds are nothing but sound waves with a high frequency. So in a way, changing the power of the electromagnet attached to a vibrating membrane of the speaker can essentially produce ultrasound waves".

On noticing a confused chemistry-major Ned, Sarah concluded, "Yeah, it is very much possible. However, it varies from device to device. So, one needs to have very good knowledge of hardware in order to tamper with something like this".

"It is scary how these devices we are practically addicted to can do so much harm than we realise.", Sarah continued.

"But you should be able to trace back to the person tampering it, right?", Ned asked gesturing towards the four phones that were lying on the table wrapped in an evidence bag.

"I should be", Sarah said with a sigh. "But I gotta say, this person really knows what he is doing. Or She".

Ned nodded looking sad. 

"But I will keep trying", Sarah reassured. "Don't worry. We will find him. Now that we know the M.O."  
"Thanks to you", Sarah quickly added.

"Yeah", Ned said sounding unconvinced. They know what had happened but the killer was still out there.

Ned wondered on his way back home. Who could they have possibly pissed off? Someone who was incredibly good with technology. Ever since they started working at BuzzFeed, they were surrounded by many techies and nerds but none of them had a reason to hurt them. The Try Guys were mostly friendly with everyone. This was the work of a deranged maniac who knew a lot about the Try Guys and somehow wanted to hurt them. All the little games had something to do with the videos they made over the years. Maybe it was a 'fan'? But the Try Guys have always tried not to be offensive to anyone. What did they do or say that affected someone so much?

Just then, Ned remembered something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is the perfect place to mention that all these characters you see are completely made up and I am using an online name generator for that. Any resemblance to a fictional as well as non-fictional person is purely coincidental. Anyways, I would love to hear some suggestions/ideas as I have mentioned already, I am very much new to fanfiction writing.


	5. Looking Back

####  **Looking Back**

* * *

**October of 2018**

"Alright guys, we are ready to film", Eugene announced. The Try Guys are on the lawn of Ned's old house, a.k.a the Try Guys office, filming a new video.

"Yeah let's just get done with it already", Zach complained. 

As they were ready to roll, they noticed someone watching them film from the other side of the fences. At first, they ignored him hoping he would just leave. But he just stared at them. It was getting really uncomfortable for all of them. Something about his vibe made them feel weird.

"Can we help you?", Keith asked. Everyone was confident in the most social Try Guy.

"Oh yeah", the man replied in a raspy voice. "I was hoping you would give me a job here".

That came as a surprise to all of them. They may be new at running a company but such a direct request was the last thing they were expecting. Moreover, they were not planning on hiring someone at that point. Not to mention, the money was still a bit tight as they had just started this company.

"Sorry, we are not currently hiring", Ned said. "But drop us an email with your resume and we would let you know when we have a vacancy". Ned was polite but the man looked embarrassed and hurt by this statement.

"But you never even looked at my skills", the man was sounding very assertive. He looked hurt. 

"We would love to hear about it", Keith said. "But as he said, we are currently full. It's a small company. We can't hire anyone at this point."

Keith added, "If it is of any consolation, we can collab with you on a video. But we will need to discuss a lot of things first. As you can see, we are kinda in the middle of something. We can't help you at this moment".

"No!", the man refused. "You don't think I am capable enough"

"That is not what we meant, buddy", Zach said. 

"No", the man refused. All of a sudden, he started walking away in an awkward manner, mumbling something to himself as his receding figure disappeared from their sight. The man's behaviour was incredibly strange. He looked like he was in his own world and had a serious self-esteem issue. 

"What a strange guy", Eugene said.

"Yeah", Keith and Zach replied in unison, still staring at the direction where the man went.

"That happened. We can't do anything about it now.", Ned said "But, we need to wrap up his shoot. It's Wednesday. I need to head home early".

They wrapped up their shoot for the day and all went to their respective homes. The stress from their work pushed the incident to the back of their mind. 

That man was never seen near the Try Guys' office again.

* * *

**Few Weeks after the Incident**

At this point, the encounter with a strange man was completely forgotten by everyone. It was an ordinary day at work. Everyone was working peacefully when they were interrupted by an editor.

"What the heck?!", the editor exclaimed.

"What happened?", Ned asked as all of the co-workers gathered around the computer.

The screen seemed to be frozen and was flashing some strange texts in a window. Whatever it was, their computer looked like it was affected by a virus.

"This has to be a prank", Keith said.

Being an online sensation, the Try Guys had fans with a wide range of interests and talents. They kept emailing them fan arts and whatnot. It did not come as a surprise that some young fan decided to prank them for attention. And it was not even that harmful of a virus. It was a classic prank that anyone in high school can easily pull off. 

They disregarded it as it looked like an attempt to draw their attention. They never said anything about it not wanting to give the crook unwanted attention that they were seeking.

Thankfully, they had backups. They updated their computers and took necessary steps so that something like this never happens again.

That was the only time something like that ever happened. The harmless prank was forgotten soon.

The Try Guys indulged themselves in projects they always wanted to do. They were working on a book, planning an extravagant live show and at the same time producing videos twice a week. They completely forgot about the incidents.

* * *

**Present Day**

Ned was sitting on the couch thinking to himself. Maybe both the incident had a connection. What if that strange man was the man behind the virus?

It is true that they completely disregarded his "job application". But they could not have afforded another employee at that point. He looked really upset and he had a reason to hate them. The man was clearly a suspect now. But, Ned had no idea if he was good with tech or not. Maybe, they should have listened to him.

Ned remembered the look on his face, he was looked deranged and maniac. That man clearly needed help. 

They never got his name or any information about him. Maybe he watched their videos and wanted to work with them. The Try Guys are always so friendly on camera and rejection coming from them may have been the last thing that guy expected.

There was only one way to find out a Try Guys hater.

Comment Section!


	6. Chapter 6

"Honey, I kept the dinner in the refrigerator", Ariel called out from the basement staircase. "In case you want some later". 

"I'm not hungry", Ned said, not looking up from the computer screen.

Ariel sighed and made her way to the bedroom. Earlier, she spent the evening waiting for her husband on the dinner table for the past two hours. It was normal for her these days. 

Ned for the past few weeks had been digging through the comment section of the old Try Guys videos and online forums to find some clue about that man with very little luck.

The toughest part for Ned was going through old Try Guys videos. He had consciously avoided watching those for the last few years. His heart ached as he watched his friends on the screen, very much alive and laughing and goofing around. It hurt Ned deeply but he knew he had to keep going if he wanted to find their killer. It was the only way to find out who did this and why they did what they did.

* * *

_Internet is a pretty mean place. Being popular on the Internet also meant having many haters. People say a lot of hurtful things and for people who cannot take criticism properly, the Internet can be a pretty scary place. As tough as it is for popular creators, the hatred faced by new creators can be even more devastating._

After going through an endless number of comments and forum posts, there was one thread that interested Ned the most. There was a post on a forum from 5 years ago where someone had asked: "Does anyone know where the Try Guys office/Ned's old house is located?"

Ned clicked on the link. There was only one reply.

_"Stop being a creep. Are you planning to stalk them or what? Dude, just get a life and give those people some privacy. They wouldn't want a loser like you near them anyway. You should just go...."_   
  


Ned did not want to read any more of that. Intrigued, Ned went on to check out that person's profile.

This person seemed to be a great fan of the Try Guys. One could almost call it an unhealthy obsession. 

There is an interesting thing about, most of his post is from and before October 2018. It could be a strange coincidence but it was the only lead Ned had in weeks.

One part of the profile consisted of fan arts and animations. This person clearly has a lot of skills, including programming skills, evident from the ASCII animations of The Try Guys. They clearly took a long time. Ned wondered why he wasted his talent and time on someone like the Try Guys?

Ned also noticed that most of the responses he received were pretty negative. Ned has, of course, seen fan-arts that may be better in comparison to this but going through this profile, he really understood the effort that went into them and felt bad about those mean comments.

Then, things started getting weird.

On the other side, the profile consisted of photos, articles and videos where the Try Guys appeared, some of which even Ned could not remember. This person seemed to be collecting them. He has also commented on various posts and seemed to know and catch every tiny detail they have thrown around on their videos. He even went to comment arguments trying to correct some fact about the Try Guys. Ned was no stranger to online stalkers but there was something about this profile and the obsession that he had made him uneasy.

Just when he thought things could not make him more uncomfortable, he found a post captioned "Spotted the Try Guys" and the picture was the four of the Try Guys having lunch at a restaurant and it seemed like it was taken secretly from another table. Followed by another post made after that. It was a shot of Ned's old house. 

They were being followed and they did not even know.


End file.
